Darth Fear
by Gia Alexander
Summary: As Darth Sidious, Palpatine tries to turn a young Wilhuff Tarkin into a Sith apprentice. Considering Tarkin's later atrocities at Mon Calamari, Omwat, and Alderaan, and his authority over Darth Vader, did Palpatine actually succeed?


**DARTH FEAR**

CORUSCANT 

With the changing of a robe, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine transformed himself into Sith Master Darth Sidious. With sinister intent, he then retreated to his secret meditation chamber secluded deep within his private apartments in the Prime Senate Spire on Coruscant. He had been without an apprentice for three years now, after the loss of Darth Maul to the Jedi, and the lack of an accomplice was of late significantly thwarting his plans. Sidious vowed that the Jedi would pay in blood for Maul, and all the other trouble they had caused.

His young covert assistant, Commander Wilhuff Tarkin of Eriadu, had already proved most valuable at his side in monitoring and undermining the activities of the Jedi on Coruscant. As it turned out, Tarkin and his Phelarian wife hated Jedi as much as he did. They seemed to have an uncanny instinct for anticipating and interpreting the actions of the local Jedi vermin, and no wonder. Lady Tarkin was highly Force-sensitive, though completely unaware of it and thus untrained. Her husband, on the other hand, was the most powerful deep latent Palpatine had ever encountered.

Deep latents were also Force-sensitive, but their sensitivity was buried so far down in their subconscious that they often remained unaware of their talents, as only another equally powerful non-latent sensitive could perceive their potential, and only if they were looking for it. Hence, Palpatine's strict instructions to Tarkin to never physically go near the Jedi Temple himself, although he was told it was simply to avoid recognition. Deep latents were also legendary for their power, if they could survive the difficult and dangerous process of raising their sensitivity to the level of their consciousness. Not all deep latents could be sensitized successfully, however. If Force sensitivity could not be attained, a deep latent could still be used by a trained sensitive as a powerful energy channel, particularly as an instrument for the savage and ruthless rage of the Dark Side.

Palpatine had intended eventually to place Tarkin in the highest levels of government and the military, his position augmented by his wife's lucrative birthright, a large and prosperous megonite moss mining corporation, that would provide a renewable source of very powerful explosives and munitions. It was for that purpose that he had married them on the spot in his chambers the previous year when they had asked only that he bind their engagement. Indeed, they were very much in love with each other despite his motives and intentions, and their complementary sentiments, energies, sensitivities, and ideals matched each other perfectly. In essence, they were soul mates, and so whatever affected one would affect the other. Palpatine had accepted that when he accepted them into his "Inner Circle." At the time, their symbiosis was an advantage.

But now, with the need for a Sith apprentice bearing down hard upon him, Palpatine began to re-examine the placement of his resources. If he could raise Tarkin's sensitivities, then he would become Darth Fear, Dark Lord of the Sith. Based upon his previous actions and decisions, however, Palpatine would have to consider an additional aspect of his new plan. A Dark _Lady _of the Sith? Since the time of Darth Bane, however, the Sith's numbers had been limited to two, one master and one apprentice. But Sidious was one for changing things, changing the galaxy as Palpatine, and changing the Sith order if it worked to his advantage. The possibility intrigued him. The Tarkins were so much more powerful together, he knew, and the concept would afford him _two_ agents of death and destruction working in consort, if he could put his prejudice toward the female gender aside.

Palpatine knew he could not afford simply to eliminate Lady Tarkin, who was also the niece of his premier Grand Admiral Selden Motti. To do so would not only alienate Motti, but would also essentially cut his protég's proverbial legs from beneath him. After all, Sidious mused, Typhani Tarkin was hardly the weak, delicate, overly feminine stereotype that was the target of his animosity. A true Phelarian in the female sense, she stood nearly as tall as her husband, a large-boned, full-figured, solidly built woman whose strong jaw line, pale complexion, dark eyes, and long, flowing black hair gave her a severe appearance. Her attitude gave her a presence to match—cunning, intelligent, creative—a shrewd businesswoman who wore leather jackets and boots and drove a truck. Yet she could be quite stately as well, with a knack for the official event, and versatile, just as much in her element in a bejeweled ball gown as a business suit, though she preferred the latter. Palpatine knew he could not waste such versatility. Realizing Lady Tarkin's potential would be merely a matter of training. However, her husband would have to realize his own potential first. Palpatine knew it was going to be difficult and dangerous—perhaps quite painful—for both of them, and that the ordeal to come would reveal aspects of their personalities that he had not yet had the opportunity to observe.

Palpatine—Sidious—sat back in his meditation chair and reached out, and up, with his powerful and sadistic mind. It was time to begin.

Nearly two kilometers above, in an apartment high on the residential level of Prime Senate Spire, Wilhuff Tarkin sat working busily at his computer terminal, carefully chronicling and cross-linking the latest information he had obtained relative to the local Jedi. A master database developer with a photographic memory, his knowledge of the Jedi would be their undoing. At least such was his plan.

As he continued to work, uploading some information from his datapad, he perceived a strange sensation, as if someone had placed a hand on either side of his head. He shook it off, thinking it was an insect or perhaps a draft from the ceiling fan. Everything seemed fine for a few minutes, but then he thought he perceived someone behind him. Thinking simply that his wife had come into the room, he glanced around. Nothing.

"I've been at this a bit too long, I think," he muttered to the computer, and then rose to go to the kitchen for another can of carbonated caffeine and the rest of a bag of wafers he hadn't finished. Typhani lay asleep on the futon in the living room, the holovision remote still in her hand. He cast a throw blanket over her, took the remote, and switched off the holovision.

_"We've got to get the computer out of the bedroom_," he thought as he walked back down the hall to return to his work. Or get out of the cramped, one-bedroom apartment they'd occupied since coming to Coruscant. He sat back down and began to move the uploaded information from the datapad into the appropriate records in his main database. Then everything went white.

The sensation was initially like being struck in the back of the head with the hilt of a blaster. He thought that indeed someone had struck him as he spun around in his computer chair, both hands going to his head. Within a second or two, it seemed to have passed, but then his vision doubled as the pain drove deeper, burning and raging, as if someone were cleaving his skull with a Jedi lightsaber. He had never felt pain that intense before. He started to get up, but then collapsed onto the bed, drawing himself up and grasping his head in agony.

Far below, Palpatine finally relented, having tired himself as well. This was going to be especially difficult, he could tell, but well worth the effort if he succeeded. The effects would last for hours, he knew, perhaps a day or more, but his subject was young and strong. There was no need to be concerned at this point.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Typhani Tarkin stirred, rubbed her eyes, and looked at the clock. She rose stiffly from the uncomfortable futon and started down the hall. Her husband would usually come get her when he had finished with the computer and was ready to go to bed. Annoyed that he hadn't come for her, and that he had instead fallen asleep across the bed by himself, she activated the overhead lights with a quick scan of her hand across the sensor plate. "Wilhuff Adrian Tarkin, you've got some nerve! See, you shouldn't be working so late at night. Now move over!" she demanded.

He abruptly brought one arm around to shield his eyes. "Don't turn the lights on!"

It was then that she noticed the spilled soda can and the wafers scattered on the floor. Her expression changed from annoyance to concern as she sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for him. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," he said tensely. As soon as he attempted to move, waves of nausea struck him, and he bolted for the bathroom in the hallway. Thinking it was probably nothing more than a flu bug, Typhani went to take care of him. He stumbled back to bed, but when the headache didn't subside, she went to the kitchen to fill a plastic bag with crushed ice.

"You know, I think you've got a migraine," she observed as she wrapped the bag of ice in a small towel and put it next to his head. "A bit too much stress, no?" He didn't respond to the comment as she slipped back into bed next to him.

Typhani let her husband sleep in the following day until the servant droid brought in their morning meal. He then dragged himself to the dinette, but barely touched his breakfast.

"Do you have any meetings or the like today?" Typhani asked.

He had to think about it for a moment, still a bit addled from the previous night's experience. "No, actually, I don't."

"Go on back to bed, then," she told him. "You don't look so good."

"Yes, I think you're right," he commented tiredly and headed back down the hall.

By mid-afternoon he seemed better, back up on the computer again. "I wonder what set that off," Typhani said when she came in to check on him. "You seemed fine last evening."

He shook his head. "I just hope it doesn't happen again," he said, reaching for his datapad. "I don't have time for that sort of thing right now."

Then she noticed a curious cylindrical object lying on the desk next to the computer's keypad. "What's _this_ thing?" she asked, reaching for it. He moved quickly to block her hand.

"Don't touch it. It's one of those Jedi weapons. The Chancellor gave it to me. I have to learn how they work, and try to devise a way to subvert them."

She leaned close. "Cut off their hands!" she whispered lasciviously. He merely chuckled at her. "Well, if you're sure you're all right," she continued, "I'm going down to the craft supply market and a couple of other places," she said as she reached into their closet for a light jacket.

"Oh, no, I'm fine, go ahead," he assured her, steadily typing.

As she exited the building, Typhani got an uneasy feeling about leaving him alone, but she really needed to get out of that small apartment for a while. It could get a bit cramped and stuffy at times. After all, she was from wide-open Phelarion.

When she returned a couple of hours later, she found her husband sitting in the middle of their living room floor surrounded by a small, partially disassembled droid, several half-empty boxes, and more gadgetry and circuitry than she had ever seen in one place outside of a starship. In fact, he'd moved the coffee table to the wall under the window to have more space to work. "What in the universe!" she exclaimed, walking up to the mess just so that the toes of her boots barely touched two components.

"Those packages I was waiting for finally came."

"I see that." She smiled down at him. "I know, I know, don't ask too many questions."

"I'm going to need your help, actually," he told her congenially. In return for her discretion, he was in fact quite good about involving her in certain things when he could. Soon, he was darting back and forth between the living room and the bedroom, hooking something up to the computer. She watched him curiously as she sat on the futon working on an intricate piece of beadwork, a hobby of hers. Finally, he put a few small components back inside one of the droid's access panels and then went back to the bedroom. "Typhani!" he called from down the hall.

"What?"

"Talk to the droid!"

"What should I say to the droid?"

"I don't know! Be creative!"

Typhani moved next to the droid and put her arm around it. "Little droid," she said, "you have a very inquisitive master, no?"

"Excellent! Come look!"

Typhani proceeded back to their bedroom to see her words coming up on the computer screen. She was nonplussed. "Adrian, you can get listening devices and voice activation software every day of the universe! Why such a complicated droid?"

"Because those other things are boring, and are either immobile or must be planted on someone. For my purposes, I need something very interesting and enticing that will move from place to place, independent of a host. Tomorrow you can go with me and we'll put it someplace where its new master can find it."

"Okaaaaay," she said, shaking her head. "You and your intrigues!"

The following afternoon, the droid moved silently between them as they strolled down a Coruscant side street. A group of dirty and excited boys ran raucously past them. "Those teenage boys and their races," Typhani commented condescendingly. "It's amazing more of them don't get themselves killed!"

"This will do," Adrian said, and pulled his small electronics toolkit out of Typhani's bag. He very quickly opened two of the droid's access panels, removed a few components, which he stuffed into Typhani's bag, and then snipped a couple of small wires. The droid went completely inactive. Adrian replaced the access panels, and then turned the droid over on its side next to a trash masher.

"What did you do?" Typhani asked, confused.

"I broke it. Do you think a twelve-year-old can figure out how?"

"A twelve-year-old?"

"Yes. Come, let's watch," he said as he took her by the arm and led her across the street into a small alcove between two buildings, into the shadows, where they couldn't be seen.

It wasn't long before a pre-teen boy dressed in Jedi Padawan clothing came down the street from the direction of the undercity podraces. Adrian nudged his wife on the arm to indicate that their quarry was at hand. Together they watched as the youngster took the bait. "The others and I have been watching him. The Chancellor seems to have a particular interest in him. He's quite intelligent, but a rowdy and rebellious little one. He doesn't listen to his teacher, and so he gets into quite a bit of trouble. Just the sort of loose gun we need," he explained.

The boy righted the broken droid and began to manually push it down the street in front of him.

"Where's he taking it?" Typhani asked.

"To the Jedi Temple, where else?"

The Tarkins smiled cunningly at each other as their thoughts turned to the transcription device back in their apartment.

"Do you think he'll figure it out?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. He's quite good with machines, droids in particular."

Palpatine had indeed taken a keen interest in the Jedi boy with an affinity for droids, but the child was as yet far too young to serve him well as an apprentice. If his present plan to install Wilhuff Tarkin in that role worked, perhaps the boy could become a Dark Side Adept, and then advance to Dark Lord at some point in the future when Sidious found it advantageous to reassign Tarkin—or whenever the boy proved strong enough to take the position for himself by force. But present fates needed to be determined first before the future of a young and wayward Jedi. Sidious didn't want to establish a perceivable pattern to his torments, but neither did he want to set Tarkin off when he was in a public or dangerous situation, either. Nor did he wish to disrupt his work too greatly, unless it became necessary to accomplish his intended goal. He would have to be creative, watching his protég's schedule carefully, and slip away at different times of the day to try to pry his way into his unsuspecting mind.

Though he respected and even admired Lady Tarkin, her Phelarian heritage did come with a slight liability—her religion—to which she had quickly converted her previously atheistic husband. Originating in the Senex Sector, on a planet called Aquilae located not too distant from Phelarion, the practitioners of the arcane Outer Rim doctrine followed a belief system known as "The Power of the Essence." In a way, the religion resembled a belief in the Force, only at a different frequency, if you will. Believers considered their life energy to be part of the Essence, and divided the Essence into three components collectively called the "Trinity of Being"—Life, Sentience, and the Collective Unconscious, the latter being the generational knowledge of all believers.

The problem for Palpatine was that practitioners of the Senex faith considered it a sacrilege to use the Essence to manipulate the free will of others, a tenet in direct opposition to the Jedi and the Sith with their myriad mind-control techniques. This new belief, recently implanted and reinforced by the bond of marriage, would make Tarkin's latency particularly difficult to reach, as he would very likely subconsciously resist any mental manipulation. Still, Palpatine remained undaunted.

A week and a half later, Typhani came home from the gym just before lunch and found that her husband was still away at his morning meeting with his cadre of "Jedi subversives." She made her way back to their bedroom to change out of her exercise clothes. As she did so, she once again noticed the odd cylinder on Adrian's computer desk. Her curiosity overcame her. Carefully, she picked it up, mindful that the things could ignite even with the lightest touch. However, as one accustomed to handling megonite, she brandished the weapon easily and with confidence. With a touch of her right thumb, she activated the lightsaber, and its green blade shone forth with brilliance and power. The weapon vibrated slightly in her hand as she moved it about in faux parries and swipes. She found it interesting, even intriguing, if not a bit mystical, and a strange feeling came over her, as though she already bore an affinity for the thing.

In another part of the Senate complex, Chancellor Palpatine abruptly excused himself from a meeting with Senators Bail Organa and Orn Free Taa. It seemed to the Senators as if some alarm had gone off that only the Chancellor could hear. Palpatine rushed to his private apartments and into his secret chambers, congratulating himself that the old saber had indeed proved to be an enticement to his young protégé, an interest and affinity that just might make reaching him a bit easier. Or so he thought. Sidious' perceptions weren't quite on cue.

In a nearby conference room, Adrian had just concluded his own meeting, and remained momentarily to enter some notes on his datapad. He knew he had just recently changed the power cell, yet the text on the small screen looked blurry. Annoyed, he tapped the PDA against his other palm a few times, and then resumed his notes. The text quickly degenerated from blurry to doubled, and a slight nauseous feeling alerted him that the problem was not with his datapad. He then started back quickly toward his apartment, where he and Typhani were to have lunch.

By the time he reached the lift banks in the lobby of Prime Senate Spire, the crushing pain had once again assaulted him at the base of his skull. The elevator ride only made the dizziness and nausea worse, and he leaned heavily against the rear wall of the lift, closing his eyes tightly against the pain and the bright overhead light. Finally reaching his apartment, Adrian stumbled inside and collapsed onto the futon.

Hearing him enter, Typhani quickly deactivated the saber and returned it to its place on the computer desk. Then she went cheerfully to greet her husband, but found him ill instead. So much for their lunch date.

"Not again," she said as she knelt down next to him. She wanted to get him to the bed, but this time he wouldn't move. He knew better. Typhani pulled the living room drapes closed to shut out the light as much as possible and sat down on the end of the futon next to him, concerned. He seemed feverish, and to be trembling slightly. She prepared another bag of crushed ice, and sat with him until the worst of it passed.

"If this happens again," she told him later after she had managed to coax him to the bedroom, "you need to go to the medcenter. They have effective treatments for migraines. You don't have to suffer needlessly."

"It's probably just stress, like you said last week," he dismissed. He simply refused to be weak, let alone have the Chancellor find out about it.

As he napped the following afternoon, still recovering, still a little dizzy, the computer started making quite a bit of internal noise. Adrian rose up off of his pillow and reached for the mouse. Text soon began to stream across the screen.

"I knew you'd do it! Excellent!" he said to the Jedi boy as if he could hear. He stiffly transferred from the bed into his computer chair and watched with fascination as the text scrolled. Then he put on his headset, and a wry, sinister smile crept across his thin face.

"I'm in!"

"You're in what?" Typhani asked as she came into the room. He then clicked open another window and began typing rapidly.

"Come see!"

"Yes, but why are you listening to it? I thought the computer would transcribe it?"

"It will, in that I obviously can't listen to them round the clock. But the text transcription software doesn't distinguish who's speaking, inflections, emphasis, alien speech, and so forth. The real value is here," he explained, tapping the headset with the stylus to his datapad. "Once I get voiceprints on all of them," he continued, "I can program in some voice recognition capabilities so that it will distinguish some of them. The boy, for instance." Typhani just nodded as she looked over his shoulder.

After a month of trial and error, Palpatine knew he wasn't making any progress with his very deep deep latent. He knew he was going to have to be more aggressive, despite the unpleasant and potentially disruptive--and dangerous--consequences. Perhaps, he thought, it would be easier if he approached his subject while asleep, foraging his way into his subconscious mind quickly before he could completely wake up and resist. Palpatine rose in the middle of the night, drew back his savage mind like a javelin, and lunged deep.

He'd had four episodes in as many weeks, but Adrian, being the typical military male, still would not go to the medcenter. Typhani had stocked their bathroom cabinet with as many remedies as she thought might help, but none of them seemed to work. With each recurring episode, the lingering effects seemed to get worse and last longer, the nausea, the dizziness, the double vision . . .

Typhani awoke with a start in the middle of the night. Adrian had grasped her wrist, and she realized that he had gone completely rigid next to her. "Oh, no! Not another one!" she said tensely as she sat up and pulled her arm free. "Enough! Come on, we're going down the medcenter. Now!" she insisted. She climbed out of bed and reached into a drawer for a jumpsuit that she could throw on quickly.

He didn't answer her. He didn't move. He could do neither. Then the convulsions started. Typhani gasped as she descended onto the bed and held on to him, shocked and terribly concerned. When it didn't subside quickly, she pulled him to the middle of the bed so he wouldn't throw himself off, and started to get up. "I'm going to get help," she said, intending to go to the Senate Support Services network panel built into their kitchen wall and activate the medical emergency alarm. He still had enough presence of mind to stop her.

"No!" he said tensely, grasping handfuls of her nightgown, fighting the onslaught with all his strength. She held him close, her own fear and anguish building rapidly within her.

Sidious pressed on relentlessly. "You will learn to let me in! It will be easier on you when you do," he muttered. He finally backed off when he sensed Typhani's distress, but his determination only intensified. He was beginning to perceive his lack of progress as defiance on the part of his young protégé, as if he knew what was happening to him. Palpatine didn't dare tell him. He didn't want Tarkin to know of his potential unless it could be made to serve his will.

By the next morning, Adrian was at last too dizzy and too out of it to resist Typhani's insistence any longer as he leaned on her in the elevator on the way down to the medcenter. Two fears were foremost in her mind, a brain tumor, or that it was her own father who had done this to her husband. The two had gotten into a misunderstanding a few months before she and Adrian came to Coruscant. Baron Nostremi, in a fit of rage, had bludgeoned his future son-in-law with an office chair, knocking him unconscious.

"Why is it that you military types never come in here until you are in very serious trouble?" a young medic admonished Adrian as he and Typhani made him get into a hoverchair before he completely lost his balance. "Okay, for starters, how often has this been happening, and how long has it been going on?"

Of course, Adrian tried to downplay the situation. "Just once or twice, over the past couple of weeks."

Typhani folded her arms across her chest and leaned back on one heel, glaring down at him. "This is the fifth time, over the past month and a half."

"Uh-huh," the medic noted, and jotted something on his datapad. "Any recent trauma?"

"No," Adrian said flatly, raising his hand to the very spot where the chair had struck him.

"A nasty blow to the head, about a year and a half ago," Typhani clarified.

The medic had heard enough. "Okay, you're coming with me," he said as he put the datapad in his pocket. He was used to dealing with military men being minimalists. At least this one had a wife who was looking out for his best interests.

When they were reunited a few hours later, Adrian and Typhani were both somewhat relieved that no apparent overt cause could be found for the episodes--no brain tumor, no residual head trauma, and no abnormal brain waves to indicate that he had contracted a seizure disorder or the like. So, they were simply sent home with a bag of medication to treat the symptoms, and a vid on stress management techniques.

Palpatine wanted to see first hand how well his subject was holding up. He'd almost broken through last night. Of course he knew where the Tarkins had been all morning. After all, if they could track Jedi, he could certainly track them. Another tactic had also occurred to Palpatine. If he could temporarily free his subject of other concerns, then perhaps he could succeed in reaching and raising his level of Force sensitivity. Events the previous year had already proved that he could reach and influence him from across the sector.

Adrian and Typhani no sooner reached their apartment when the comm beeped. "The Chancellor wants us to come down for dinner again," Adrian said tiredly when he concluded the conversation. Such invitations had been coming at least once a month, usually twice. The last one had been right before his first migraine, or whatever it was.

"Maybe we'd better not," Typhani said, putting a caring hand on the side of his face. "I don't think you're up to it. Not tonight."

"I have to be up to whatever the Chancellor calls for," he insisted.

"Then perhaps you should let him know what's going on," she suggested.

"No, and whatever you do, don't say anything, especially since there's no obvious cause for it. He'll have no tolerance for that," he warned. She put her arms around him, and they held one another close for a few moments before preparing for the coming evening.

"And so the transcription device is up and running?" Palpatine asked as they moved to the formal parlor of his private chambers after dinner.

"Perfectly," Adrian assured him.

"Excellent!" Palpatine complimented. Little pleased Adrian more than the Chancellor's approval. Palpatine shifted a bit in his chair then.

"You two have been quite busy lately, then," he said. "It's starting to show, if you don't mind my saying so. Why don't you kids take off for a few days? Go! Go visit your families for a while. Off to the Outer Rim with you!"

Palpatine could easily perceive the loosening of tensions between them. So, he planned a little retreat of his own. As far as the Chancellor's staff knew, he had gone to his vacation home on Byss for a few days. In reality, he sealed himself in his private apartments on Coruscant and retreated to his meditation chamber, where he would spend much of the next ten days. This time, he would not lunge forth in one massive effort. Instead, he would wear Tarkin down, steadily, relentlessly . . .

Upstairs, Typhani began to pack their things as Adrian connected a large-capacity optical backup drive to the computer. It would store all of the transcription from the droid in the Jedi Temple while they were away.

ERIADU 

Typhani and Adrian arrived at the Eriadu City spaceport early the following afternoon, and proceeded overland through the city to Villa Galaxia, the Tarkin family compound that overlooked the bay on the west side of the city. Adrian was most grateful that his parents were nowhere in sight when they arrived, so he and Typhani slipped unnoticed up to their private apartments.

"It's encouraging that Gideon's grades were so much better this term," Typhani said of Adrian's younger brother as they went out onto the stone terrace facing the waterfront.

"He finally got some sense in his head and switched to the Army track. He can handle that, at least. It's much easier. The Navy track is the most difficult," Adrian explained.

"Now you can't help it that you got all the brains," she chided him with a smile.

"No, I suppose not."

"This was most kind of the Chancellor," Typhani continued as she put her feet up on a stool and leaned back in her lounger.

"As long as we remain loyal to him, Typhani, he will always take very good care of us," her husband assured her as he took the seat next to her. A servant droid soon brought them large tumblers of chilled tea and a plate of wafers, and they simply relaxed the afternoon away.

They were jolted out of their reverie a couple of hours later by a shrill, tinny, annoying voice. "Adrian! Adrian! I never see you anymore! I didn't even know you were here! I had to find out from the droids! Honestly, Adrian, don't you want to have anything to do with your own mother anymore? You should have never left home! I told you so, too, didn't I? You're getting to be as bad as your father! Oh, _there_ you are!"

"Hello, Mother," Adrian greeted, less than enthusiastically.

Marganitha's bubbles suddenly went flat as she stepped onto the balcony. "Oh. _She's_ with you."

"Mother, I've told you before, she has a name, she's my wife, and she's _always_ with me."

"Hello, Maggie," Typhani said with deliberate mock congeniality.

"Yes, well, whatever," Maggie dismissed. She'd never forgiven them for not having a large, public wedding so that she could indulge herself in the social spectacle. Nor did she appreciate Typhani taking her first-born son from her. Her own husband, the elder Wilhuff Adrian Tarkin, stayed gone so much that she'd grown accustomed instead to Adrian's presence, as he was known in the family and among their friends to distinguish the two.

"Well, I have some good news. Your father, Morgana, and Gideon are all away, so it's just the three of us tonight. We'll be having dinner in the breakfast room, where it's cozy," Maggie continued.

"We have other plans," Adrian told her squarely.

Marganitha let out an exasperated sigh, turned on her heel, and stormed back into the house, obviously hurt.

"We do?" Typhani asked.

"We do now," he said, smiling over at her.

Typhani sat up and stretched her arms in front of her. "You know, Adrian, you should be glad that you still have a mother. I never knew mine. I don't even remember her. She chose the company of another man over me. Yours won't live forever."

He relented. "Oh, all right. But you're the one willing to put up with her being so rude to you. I won't stand for it."

"Neither will I, past a point. You'll know if she crosses the line. She's virtually alone now, though. I think we can be a bit understanding of that, no?"

"If we must," he said as they rose to go inside.

Dinner passed pleasantly and uneventfully. Marganitha's cultured civility, as well as that which she had instilled in her children, prohibited bickering at the dinner table. The conversation consisted mainly of the newlyweds' life on Coruscant, minus mention of any classified information or of Adrian's recent difficulties.

Adrian and Typhani went back to their suite after dinner, basked in the steam shower for awhile, then changed into some comfortable nightclothes and robes and settled at the large round table by the bedroom window, Typhani with her journal and Adrian with his laptop computer. They pursued their interests in silence for a while, until the image on Adrian's computer screen began to double, and one hand went to his left temple. Typhani looked up.

"Oh, no! Again?" she asked as she started to get up.

He just nodded to her. "Did you bring--"

She didn't let him finish. "Yes, I brought everything," she said as she quickly unzipped one of their suitcases to locate the bag from the medcenter. "Here, quickly," she said as she took out the bottle of medication they were supposed to try first. The double vision had already gotten so bad that he nearly missed the edge of the table as he set his glass down. Standing next to him, Typhani reached over to switch off and close the computer. He pressed against her, and she put her arms around him and leaned over such that her right cheek touched the crown of his head, her long, jet tresses cascading about him like a protective cloak.

They went to bed, but neither slept. Adrian's illness grew worse as the night wore on. Typhani cycled him through the entire medication regimen they had been given, but by morning, it still had not abated. "It's not as severe as before," he told Typhani as she leaned on her elbow, looking down at him in serious concern. "It just won't let up this time." At least the medication did well at keeping the nausea at bay, but the headache still persisted, a constant, nagging, gnawing at his temples and the base of his skull. He couldn't stand the light, and was still dizzy despite the medication. Worse now, he couldn't sleep.

Typhani kept Maggie at bay that second day by telling her that they both had a simple case of space-lag. Adrian's ordeal seemed to ebb a bit in the afternoon, and so they moved into the sitting room for a while to read and watch holovision, finally taking time to watch the stress management vid. They were both finally able to nap early in the evening and off and on that night, but toward daybreak Adrian got worse again.

The new day brought new concerns. They'd been lying quietly in bed in their darkened room, amid sparse and idle conversation. "Is that transcription device working?" Adrian asked. "The computer doesn't seem to be very active. Check the screen, would you? Is there any text streaming through?"

Typhani sat upright and took a moment to catch her breath, looking fearfully down at her husband. "Adrian, do you know where we are?"

A long hesitation. "I'm not sure . . . "

"What's happening to you?"

"I don't . . . know--" Then both hands went to his head again, not only dizzy and in pain, but now completely disoriented as well.

Typhani leaned over him and swallowed back the lump in her throat. "What are we going to do?" she whispered. She lay back down next to him and clutched him tightly to her, trying not to tremble.

Later that afternoon, Typhani raised her head when she thought she heard a familiar voice in the corridor outside their rooms. She got up and made her way quickly to the door. "Morgana!" she said urgently but quietly.

Morgana turned around, her flight bag over her shoulder and her mobile transponder to her ear. "Uh, I'll call you back later," she said, then switched off the transponder and slid it into the outside pocket of her bag. "Typhani! You look terrible! What in the universe--"

Typhani grabbed her sister-in-law by the arm and pulled her into the sitting room, quickly explaining the situation. "He's never had anything like that before," Morgana said with tense concern as she proceeded into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed next to her brother. "Adrian, are you all right? What's going on?" She switched on the bedside lamp before Typhani could warn her otherwise. Adrian jerked away from her, shielding his face with the back of his hand. Morgana took up the medication bottles from the night table to examine them. "Looks like migraines to me. Did they say what--" The sound of the sitting room door opening cut Morgana's question mid-breath.

Marganitha glanced around the sitting room for a moment, and then came into the bedroom. She was astonished to find her son and daughter-in-law still in their nightclothes, and her son still in bed, obviously ill. Then she noticed the bottles in Morgana's hands. She shot a piercingly accusatory glance at Typhani as she stopped at the foot of the bed next to her. "Adrian! What's the matter!" she screeched, and began to wring her hands habitually. "This doesn't look like space-lag to me! Have you been lying up here ill for the past two days? Good gracious, you look absolutely awful! What's wrong!?" When he didn't answer, she looked pointedly at her daughter. "Morgana!"

"He's been having migraine headaches, Mother, that's all."

"That's all! That's all! Well, he never had them before!" She turned on Typhani. "Not before he married _you_, that is! What is this! He needs to be at the medcenter! Instead you hide him away! Why, you would just as soon let him lie here and die, wouldn't you? That would set you up quite well, wouldn't it, as if you're not well enough off already! No wonder he's having migraines, putting up with the likes of you! You're the cause of this, aren't you, slouching around in your robe for days like a useless slug! You're supposed to be taking care of him!" Then she reached up and slapped Typhani hard across the face. Her head jerked to the side and her hair flew behind her, but she stood firm, and silent.

Adrian came up off the bed with a bolt of newfound strength, but Morgana put her hand out to stop him. "Adrian, don't move!" she demanded militarily. Then she scowled up at her mother. "Mother! Out! Now! You're just making it worse."

Maggie opened her mouth in preparation to flail her saber tongue at her daughter, but Morgana rose and escorted her mother from the room by the shoulders as Adrian reached for Typhani. Marganitha continued to banter at Morgana and shout barbs at Typhani even after Morgana pushed her into the hall and locked the door behind her. Marganitha promptly began to beat on the door, still yelling and screaming.

Typhani descended onto the bed beside Adrian. He drew her close and reached up to caress the side of her face where she'd been struck. She returned the embrace; first, their foreheads touched, then, briefly, their lips. Neither spoke, but the communication was clear.

Morgana was slightly embarrassed by the moment of tender intimacy she had just witnessed, but she was also awed by its intensity. How could her mother be so very wrong?

Adrian and Typhani sat with their backs to the bed's headboard as Morgana took a seat at the round table by the window. "You know, Adrian, if this stuff isn't working," she began, indicating the assortment of containers on the night table, "you really might want to go get checked out while you're here, where they know you and have your records. You know how they treat us in the Core Worlds."

Typhani looked confused. "What?"

"Coming from the Outer Rim, we're expendable, especially on Coruscant. I had one of my military physicals there. They herded my unit through like nerfs, all but three of us from Eriadu. They see us as a threat, you know, the Coruscant of the Outland Regions, but they look down on us just the same. I know what they're likely thinking, 'Frontier boy hits civilization and can't handle it. So attribute it to stress and let him suffer. Maybe then he'll go home.'"

Typhani looked incensed. Adrian, on the other hand, merely looked downcast. He glanced at Typhani. "She's right."

Typhani looked back at her husband wide-eyed. "I had no idea! But what about--"

"Not everyone is like that," he assured her before she had a lapse of discretion and finished her thought. "And one day, if I have anything to do with it, it won't be that way at all."

Morgana's suggestion was well taken, as Adrian's illness grew worse again overnight. So, the following morning, Typhani and Morgana marched him to the Eriadu City Medcenter, but the conclusion was the same as that reached on Coruscant.

"I have never had a problem handling stress before," he commented weakly as he climbed wearily back into bed. Morgana left them alone.

"The Chancellor will not hear of this," Adrian said tensely when he was sure his sister had gone.

Typhani leaned close to him. "And that worry may just be what is perpetuating this," she warned him.

He looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. "Perhaps you're right." But the stabbing, throbbing pain still did not subside, and sleep was rare and fitful. His strength was fading, and, worse, he could feel it going.

Despite his illness, Adrian would not see or speak to his mother after what she had said and done to Typhani. Marganitha found herself utterly distraught by the situation, and in just a few more days, Adrian would leave again with his vixen wife. By chance of ill luck, while on her way to the media room to select some holovids for them to watch, Typhani overheard Maggie on the comm to Adrian's father. She stood silently outside the door as Marganitha carried on melodramatically.

"Something about migraines. He never had them before! It's that Phelarian wretch that's got her claws into him! I tell you, Wilhuff, there's just something about her that I don't like! Those Phelarians aren't completely human, you know. No, they're not! Just look at the size of them, and they have some slight internal differences as well! Why, who knows what might happen if Adrian has children with her! You need to come home and put an end to this charade of a marriage and make our son come back to Eriadu where he belongs! You're never here, after all! I'm afraid for him to go back to Coruscant with her! You don't know what she's like! You should have seen her, slouching about in her nightdress for days doing absolutely nothing while he lay in bed miserable! And if he's ill and can't take care of himself, who knows what could happen! Do you want it on your conscience when we get the call that he's dead? Why, you wouldn't even be here when it came! No, I am not exaggerating, Wilhuff! You know what kind of people her father does business with? Can't you just imagine how she was raised? Why, we don't want Adrian around those sorts of people! No, I am not patronizing him! Yes, I know he's twenty-eight years old and can think for himself! Don't you think I remember giving birth to him! I know you don't recall it because you weren't here, as usual, remember? Remember! She's evil, Wilhuff! Evil! She's going to turn him against us! Do you hear me?"

Typhani had heard enough. "She's insane, Wilhuff! _Insane_! Now I see why you're never home," she muttered under her breath to her father-in-law as she made her way back upstairs with an armful of holovids. "Your mother is going to put your poor father into an early grave," she commented to Adrian as she entered their suite.

"I know," he said, almost without thinking about it. "Did she say something else to you?"

"Not directly. It's good to know where I stand, though."

He reached out for her. "Yes. At the center of my universe and the apex of my adoration!" She smiled back warmly at him for that, but then took on the airs of an actress in a very bad opera.

"No! No! Don't you know? Haven't you figured it out?" She curled up on the sofa next to him, and continued in mock melodrama a la mother-in-law. "I'm evil, Adrian! It's time you knew that! I've had a terrible upbringing, and I'm going to corrupt you and turn you against your family! Then I'm going to take you away from home and do _terrible_ things to you!"

He mustered a smile for the first time in a month. "Not tonight, dear. I have a headache." Typhani laughed openly at that, and threw her arms lovingly around him. "That sounds wonderful, actually, if this will ever stop," he continued.

"I know," she whispered, their mood dampened by his circumstances. She pulled him in front of her, and finally coaxed him to lie down with his head in her lap as they watched their holovids.

Exhausted from forcing herself to sleep so lightly, Typhani finally fell into a deep slumber later that night. But she awoke with a start when she somehow realized that Adrian was not in bed next to her. Instantly frantic, she scrambled from their sleeping place to find him, fearing that he had perhaps become disoriented and ventured out of their apartments. She didn't have to look far, for he hadn't the strength to wander. She found him in the fresher, huddled on the changing bench near the steam shower. He hadn't eaten enough that day to be ill, and so she knew that the dry heaves had once again torn away any stamina he had left. She ran a washcloth under the cold water and sat down next to him.

His voice was weak. "No one . . . no one else can know."

"Shhh. I know," she reassured as she sponged at his face.

"They'll freeze us out, you know. We won't be welcome anywhere. I'll have to leave the Navy. They'll brand me as failure. The Chancellor will think I'm a coward, and my father, he'll . . . he won't have anything to do with me at all after this!"

"Shhh, Adrian, all this negative self-talk will only make matters worse. Now stop thinking about such things."

"Whatever this is, it's consuming me."

"No, no it's not," she countered, though deep within herself, she knew he might be right.

"Why couldn't it have been something that would have killed me quickly? Why not in battle? Or in flight, even? I can't die like this, Typhani."

"Then don't." Her voice was firm, and she raised his chin to look into his eyes. He nodded slightly.

Something clattered to the floor then, something he'd been clutching in the folds of his robe. Two nearly full medication bottles rolled across the polished stone floor. Only then did Typhani realize the full scope of what he meant by 'dying like this,' and being branded a coward and a failure. She was shocked that Adrian would ever consider such a thing. Such was simply not in his character. Until recently, he had craved life's challenges, and adopted a personal motto of "Never Give Up!" He was cornered, she realized. If this illness continued to incapacitate him, his life would never be the same. And if he ended it, then his family and his culture would deem him unworthy, and everything he did during his life would be rendered meaningless. Something had him in its grip, she thought, and it would neither release him nor take him. She put her arms around him and pulled him close.

On the morning they were to return to Coruscant, Adrian was feeling particularly ill, but he insisted on going back. If they delayed their return, then the Chancellor would know something was wrong, and he simply couldn't have that. Marganitha knew he was in no shape to travel. She had been drinking most of the previous night, and Adrian and Typhani could still smell the liquor on her as they made their way down the front hall toward the main entrance to the house and their waiting overland transport. Typhani had given him a double-dose of the anti-nausea drug to prevent him from becoming space sick, and she walked with her arm around him to steady him against the dizziness and double vision.

Marganitha bantered relentlessly at her son, walking backwards, her hands on his shoulders. "You're not well, Adrian! You mustn't go back to Coruscant with her! She's the reason why you're ill! She's nagging you and putting too much pressure on you! That's it, isn't it? Don't you see, this whole thing was just a mistake, marrying her. It was a mistake, that's all, and you know what we say about mistakes, no? Mistakes are opportunities to do better the next time. Stay here, Adrian! Your father and I, we can find better for you! We'll help you do better next time. She was just an indiscretion, that's all! You're a young man, so people will understand and forgive that! Besides, you've already been in a position of planetary authority, and so you certainly don't need to be seen in public let alone on Coruscant with this disproportionate, gargantuan Phelarian specimen of shadowy, underhanded, backwater debauchery!"

Typhani stopped their advance at that. She almost robotically reached around with her left arm, passing it between Adrian and his mother, and forcibly pushed Marganitha out of Adrian's path, in front of herself, and against the corridor wall to her left. Still holding on to her husband with her right arm, pulling him with her, she stalked to within an inch of Marganitha, who nervously pressed her back to the wall, Typhani's large and powerful hand in the center of her chest. Typhani glowered sternly down at her mother-in-law with her dark, mysterious Phelarian eyes, her jaw set, a look of utter contempt and determination chiseled into her visage. She held the stance silently for a moment, intimidating the petite Marganitha with her sheer size and severe presence. Then she drew back her free hand and struck Marganitha as hard across the face as she'd been struck only days before.

Marganitha cried out and her hand went immediately to her face. She then stared hard at her son.

Adrian stood motionless by his wife's side, his hands clasped in front of him, his piercing blue eyes casting their harsh judgment in his mother's direction.

Typhani once again backed her mother-in-law against the wall, towering over her, speaking methodically, in a soft but menacing tone that Marganitha found utterly frightening. "_I_ am the _real_ Lady Tarkin now, and don't you _ever_ forget it, Maggie." With that, she and Adrian stepped into their transport and were taken away.

As they were driven away from Villa Galaxia toward the Eriadu City spaceport, Adrian said softly into his wife's ear, "That was absolutely outstanding!"

CORUSCANT 

Back on the capital, Palpatine knew what time the Tarkins were expected back. He performed a regimen of Sith exercises to prepare himself. With his subject sufficiently weakened, the time had come to increase the pressure, and break through. By tomorrow, he vowed, he would begin training his new Sith apprentices. It would be a whole new galaxy to them, and to him.

The return trip had been especially difficult for Adrian. He'd spent most of the flight with his seat let back as far as it would go, with blinding, crushing pain in his head, alternating between bouts of heat and chills, and all the while clutching a space-sickness bag. By the time they reached their apartment, he was so ill that he perceived flashes of bright white light before his eyes, and he could barely walk, even with Typhani's help. "I think we need to get you back down to the medcenter," she observed as she sat him down in one of the dinette chairs before he collapsed.

"I can't make it back down," he said weakly, and slumped onto the table.

"Adrian . . . "

Typhani shook her head, swallowed back her anguish, and wiped a small tear from the corner of each eye. She bent over him. "Come on," she said, pulling him up from the chair, "you can't stay here. Let's get you into bed at least." They slowly inched their way down the hall toward their bedroom. Typhani knew that she could carry him if she had to, but she hoped it didn't come to that.

"Typhani, you're going to have to take care of some things," he said thinly as he sank down onto their bed.

"All right," she said, leaning close to him. "Just tell me what to do."

"First, you need to let the Chancellor know we're back. Tell him . . . tell him that I had to go take care of something else, and that I said I couldn't tell you about it. Don't tell him what's actually going on, else we're done for."

"But . . . " she began. He grasped her hand insistently. "All right," she agreed, though she thought better of it. Fortunately, the droid who answered told her that the Chancellor was still away, and that he would be expected back either very late that evening or the next day. A brief respite, at least, she thought.

"Now, the computer," Adrian continued. He could no longer sit up let alone look at the backlit monitor screen.

"Can't this wait?"

"No," he insisted. He then guided her through several procedures as he lay next to her, struggling to recall access codes and passwords amidst the blinding, crushing pain in his head and the persistent spinning of the room.

It was almost time for them to go to bed anyway when they finished with the computer. The transcriber was still working, and text from deep within the Jedi Temple steadily streamed across one window on the computer screen. At last, Typhani switched off the monitor and put on her nightgown. She knew it was going to be another long night, and that Adrian probably wouldn't be able to sleep again.

She'd watched him suffer too much, for too long. She loved him so much, and his agony was heartbreaking to her. She sat up against the head of the bed and pulled him into her lap again, holding another cold pack in place, and trying hard not to let the tears start streaming down her face. She had to stay strong, for she had begun to fear that she would have to carry him in another way.

What if it really was stress, she had begun to wonder. This new position, the military, the secrets, the intrigue, the long hours, the danger, the high expectations, the Chancellor--what if it really was too much for him? What if his ambition really was larger than his ability to attain it? He would be utterly devastated, his very identity stripped from beneath him, and he would be left to fall. She would catch him, she knew. He had Villa Galaxia, after all, and his family's heritage and wealth. Even at his young age, she recalled fondly, he had already served as Eriadu's Lieutenant Governor, more than most people accomplish in a lifetime. They also had the megonite mine on Phelarion, her birthright, and so they really needed nothing more. Nothing more, in the material sense, that is. If it came to that, she feared, she would likely lose the man she had fallen so deeply and passionately in love with and be left only with a defeated and empty hull, a mere shadow of his former self and what he--they--might have become.

Or was he slipping away then and there in her very arms?

Adrian shifted a little, and Typhani blinked, brought out of her contemplation by his movement. She looked at the clock. It was after midnight. She didn't know if he had been asleep or not, as she had been lost in worry and despair. She had begun to feel a bit nauseous herself as she gazed down at him, or was it that she was sensing the storm to come?

He jerked suddenly, and drew in his breath with a quick gasp. Both hands went to his head again, and he pulled himself up into a tight, rigid knot, railing against the pain. Typhani scrambled from under him and reached for one of the medication bottles that she had set on the computer desk. It was empty. Her heart began to pound hard in her chest as she turned back to him, hovering over him, as if she could shield him somehow. In a few minutes, it seemed to ebb, and so she took up the cold pack and eased him back into her embrace again, fighting her tears even harder now.

"Are you all right, Adrian? Talk to me . . . " she finally managed to say without choking up.

He started to respond to her, but then trailed away, incoherent, and once again growing tense.

Typhani let out a slight scream as the convulsions set in again. But it was different this time. Instead of uncontrolled twitching and trembling like last time, it seemed to her as if he was trying to fight something off, as if something was attacking him. She locked her arms around him as he thrashed about, and she could hold her tears back no more.

Then he went limp.

"Adrian! Adrian!" she screamed, shaking him. No response. "Oh, no!" she cried, and scrambled from the bed and raced to the kitchen, to the Senate Support Services network panel. Even though the touch screens changed in a microsecond, she couldn't scroll through them fast enough. Finally, she reached the Medical Emergency Alarm screen and activated it. She heard the door to their apartment unlock automatically as she ran back down the hall. Crying out openly now, she threw herself onto the bed and gathered him up again, trying to get him to respond to her. Nothing.

Then she thought she sensed something, not from Adrian, but in the room itself, as if something, or someone, was there with them. Without knowing why or even having time to think about it, she rose to her feet, clenched both fists in the air, and screamed out fiercely.

"Leave him alone!"

Typhani fell still and silent at her next sensation. It only lasted for a very brief moment, but it seemed to her that in an instant, her own spirit, her very essence, had somehow exploded, expanded, filling the room, driving out anything else that might have been there.

Then her tears and her anguish returned as she fell back down onto the bed next to her still unresponsive husband. "It's too soon!" she cried, clutching him to her breast. "It's too soon!"

Far below, sealed within his meditation chamber, Palpatine had been standing, performing a powerful Sith mind-mounting maneuver, ceremoniously holding a dagger in a downward position. Without warning, the dagger flew from his hands and clattered against the wall of his chamber. Palpatine found himself thrown backwards through the air into his meditation chair. Astonished, he shook his head. Where had that burst of sheer energy come from? He had to think for a minute.

He was not angry. Not in the least. Instead, he found himself immensely impressed by Typhani's power. It was not that she was in any way stronger than him. He was simply not expecting such power to come from her, and so he was caught off guard. He smiled.

But then he sensed his error. He jolted himself out of his chair and back to his feet as he realized what he had just done. He had gone too far, pushed much too hard, too quickly, and he knew it. Palpatine actually shuddered as it struck him that he had not broken through, and that instead he had likely just destroyed one of the brightest young minds in the galaxy, his most promising protégé, and a powerfully devoted ally. He knew he had to get to him, fast.

The Chancellor made it to the medcenter just before the EMS droids arrived with Adrian, a trembling and tearful Typhani following closely behind them. She did not see Palpatine right away.

Acting as though he was leaving the medcenter, Palpatine moved quickly aside and feigned astonished concern as the group passed him. "Typhani!" he acknowledged.

She looked up, and froze where she stood as the droids moved on ahead with her husband. "Chancellor Palpatine!"

Palpatine approached her and put an arm around her. "Typhani! What's wrong? What happened?"

Adrian's words echoed in her ears, "_Don't tell him what's actually going on, else we're done for._" She tried to quickly think of a suitable response, but only more tears came. Palpatine walked her over to a group of chairs, and she sank into one of them.

"You just stay right here. I'll be right back."

"Oh, no!" Typhani cried aloud as she slumped forward in the chair. Now the Chancellor was going to find out anyway. What terrible luck. Her beloved Adrian had done nothing to deserve this, she thought.

Palpatine returned about thirty minutes later, and handed Typhani a box of tissues from a nearby table as he sat down next to her. He put his arm around her again to comfort and reassure her. "Why didn't one of you tell me?"

Typhani didn't know what to say to him. She had never spoken to the Chancellor without Adrian present, and so she was afraid she might misspeak. Finally, she mustered a response. "He never wanted to disappoint you like this."

"Nonsense!" Palpatine dismissed, and gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. "Things like this happen. People get ill from time to time. It's inevitable. It's just that I'm not sure which one of you is worse off right now."

Typhani had held so much in for so long that she simply couldn't stop her convulsive sobs. The harder she tried to stifle them, the more her insides heaved up her worry, fear, and anguish, casting them into her throat. "I just never knew it was possible to love another living being so much! It's too soon for this to happen!"

Palpatine pressed her head to his shoulder at that. "It's all right, Typhani. He's going to be all right. It was just a bad seizure of some kind. They'll figure out what caused it and the other problems, and then you two will go on as before." She just nodded, and managed to regain some composure at that. Now she was so glad that he'd been there.

Palpatine, on the other hand, had been able to assess the scope of what he'd done. He had very nearly made a young widow of Typhani. Considering her present state, he feared what would happen to her if and when she actually did lose her husband.

Palpatine resigned himself to the knowledge that Tarkin's sensitivity to the Force could not be realized. He knew as well that it would likely take several weeks for him to recover from the sensitization attempts and regain his strength. His work with the Jedi and other projects would simply have to wait now, and Palpatine knew he had only himself to blame. Only time would tell if he'd done any permanent damage.

"You go take care of your husband now," he urged Typhani as he rose to leave. "They're going to watch him for awhile, probably overnight, so I'll come back and check on you two later."

Adrian stirred as Typhani slipped into the room where he was resting, still reeling from the effects of what had been inflicted upon him. He reached up to her as she leaned over him and kissed him gently, her relief too strong for words.

"Why did he have to be here?" Adrian wondered weakly, inwardly cursing his misfortune.

Typhani took his face in her hands. "It's all right, Adrian," she reassured him. "He understands. If anything, he's upset with us for not telling him."

"Did he speak to you about it?"

"Yes."

"What did you tell him?"

"Only that you never meant to disappoint him. Nothing more."

"Did he say anything else to you, about my assignments here?"

"Yes. He said they'd find the cause of this, and then we'd go on just as before. As I told you, everything is fine with him. He said also that he'd come back and check on us later."

At last, the tense expression left Adrian's face. Making good on Coruscant, and in the eyes of the Supreme Chancellor, was not a goal to him, but rather he saw it as a necessity, essential to his sense of self-worth.

"You need to rest now," Typhani reminded him softly.

His attention finally shifted back to his current circumstances, just as another wave of vertigo struck him. "The room is spinning . . . I'm . . . I'm going to fall!"

"You're not going to fall. I won't let you fall," Typhani reassured him, drawing him close to her again.

"Don't leave me alone in this place."

She held him tighter, and whispered to him, "I'll never leave you alone."

As he had promised, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine returned later that afternoon to check on them, and at last Adrian could rest assured that his benefactor was not about to send him packing back to the Outer Rim, for good this time. As a temporary respite, perhaps.

"Maybe visiting family was not such a good idea," Palpatine reflected as he sat on the edge of the bed next to Adrian.

"Some people have toxic families," Typhani commented, and she and Adrian both smiled a bit at that.

"So I've heard," Palpatine mused, then turned a bit more serious. "They've indicated to me that you may need to be down for a few weeks to make sure this doesn't recur. Tell me, do you two have someplace where you can go by yourselves, where you can rest, relax, and recover without being disturbed?" He was about to offer them the use of his vacation home on Byss.

Typhani smiled softly. "Yes. A wonderful place."

Adrian looked at her questioningly, as did the Chancellor.

"My family has a camp on Lake Phelarion, about three hours east of Port City by overland," Typhani explained.

"Well, off to Lake Phelarion with you, then!"

The medcenter staff finally allowed Typhani to take her husband back up to their apartment the next morning, along with another extensive treatment regimen for vertigo and migraines, as well as precautionary anti-seizure medication, a veritable onslaught of chemicals, none of which he actually needed, of course. How different the galaxy may have become if Wilhuff Tarkin had only known how very cruel Palpatine had been to him.

After a few days of rest and monitoring of Adrian's condition on Coruscant, he and Typhani left for Phelarion. As they had expected, the trip was less than pleasant for Adrian, and so Typhani and her father put him straight to bed as soon as they arrived at her family estate.

PHELARION 

"Dis is bad, no?" Baron Nostremi Octovano commented to his daughter as they went back downstairs.

"He's had a terrible time of it. We both have. Sometimes I can't bear to see him struggle."

Nostremi had been troubled about something since his daughter had called him weeks ago to tell him of their difficulties. "You tink maybe I did dis?" he asked, recalling the incident with the office chair.

"No, Papa, they eliminated that possibility straight away. Although, it would have served you right for me to have let you live with that guilt for awhile," she told him matter-of-fact. Nostremi looked away, still ashamed of what he had done.

Typhani let her husband rest for a couple of hours, and then returned to their room with a tray of fruit and cheese.

"No, Typhani, I can't," Adrian insisted weakly.

She put the tray on the night table and sat down next to him. "You're already seven kilos under your minimum target weight, Adrian," she reminded him. "You have to give your body enough fuel to fight this, else it's only going to get worse again." From the night table drawer, she produced a bag of wafers, and that, along with her admonitions, enticed him to the tray.

"You take one of da servants to da camp?" Nostremi asked the next morning as they prepared to leave.

"No, Papa. Actually, we really just need to be alone for a while. I can take care of everything."

Typhani and Adrian left for the lake the following morning. Typhani let the passenger seat back in her large overland sport-utility transport and blanketed him in. It was a three-hour drive to the camp, and with a dose of vertigo medication, he would sleep the entire way. As she drove toward Port City, Typhani fought back a twinge of concern about the coming days. Adrian still seemed so ill and weak, and so she was a bit concerned about taking him so far out of town. But, she reassured herself, she had two mobile transponders and all of his medication, and so she could summon help if she needed it.

"Adrian, wake up, darling, we're here," she told him as she released his safety belt.

He sat up stiffly, still dizzy, and surprised that he had, in fact, slept the entire way. He implicitly trusted no one, and yet Typhani was the only person with whom he ever completely let his guard down and allowed to take control. He leaned on her for support, and she slowly inched him into the camp's main cabin where they'd spent so many wonderful, intimate moments in each other's embrace. He stumbled slightly on the stairs, and she did almost lift him off of them a bit to get him onto the deck.

"Listen. It's so quiet," Typhani whispered. "You're going to be all right now," she added as much to reassure herself as her husband. Perhaps there was indeed healing power in this place, Adrian thought, he hoped, as they made their way inside and to the sofa where they sat down together. They'd had moments like that, such that neither could explain, seemingly locked on to each other, unable to pull away, as if their very souls had caught somehow. Their breathing slowed, their cares fell away, and they drew even closer together.

"You are so incredibly good to me," he told her, ever mindful of how utterly kind, caring, and supportive she was.

Over the next several days, in the solace and solitude of the Phelarian forest, Adrian slowly began to feel normal again, and to regain his strength. At long last, blurry, doubled images fused back into one clear one, and the cabin slowly stopped spinning. The small but frequent meals Typhani fed him finally started staying down, and before long he could sleep through the night again.

He and Typhani were quite fond of taking walks together, and these late afternoon excursions served to replenish his energy and get his injured mind back on track. Typhani remained especially watchful of him, though, as the megonite grew everywhere. Even a slight misstep could be quite dangerous. It was on one of these outings, as they sat down on a felled log together, that Typhani latched an opportunity to talk to him about something important. She took his hand.

"There's something we need to think about, and perhaps be prepared for," she began gently. "When we return to Coruscant, what if this illness comes back? What are you going to do if it turns out that you really have taken on too much?"

"It won't come back," he snapped, almost accusingly. He started to pull his hand out of hers, but she tightened her grasp, staring at him intently. Then he looked away. "I can't think about that. It's too awful."

"You have to think about it. You know you do," she insisted quietly. They sat in silence for several minutes. "Hasn't there ever been anything else that you ever wanted to do, other than politics and the military? Other than the path your family's legacy has chosen for you? Something that _you_ wanted to do, regardless of your heritage?"

"My . . . my father wouldn't have it . . . " he admitted.

"Never mind your father," she prodded him.

"It doesn't matter. I am too well upon my path now to consider turning back. Besides, I was very young and foolish."

"Perhaps. But now you're very ill, possibly because of this path you speak of. If you could turn back, if you _had_ to, what would you do instead?"

"I would write," he finally admitted. "I was quite good at it as a boy. My mother used to call me the little poet laureate of Villa Galaxia."

"You wrote poetry?"

He cracked a bit of a smile. "I told you I was young and foolish."

"But you're an excellent writer, Adrian. I've seen some of the work you've done. Perhaps you could do more of it for the Chancellor, you know, write his speeches and the sort. He could certainly use some help there."

Adrian looked thoughtful. With a bit more work at the keypad and a bit less in the field, perhaps he wouldn't feel spread quite so thin. He tucked the idea away in his mind for future reference. Still, he sought to change the subject as they strolled back to the cabin.

They had rearranged the cabin's bedroom such that the bed faced the window, so they could lie in it and look out at the lake. As they did so on the night before they were to return to Coruscant, Adrian's thoughts finally began to turn back to his current project, and to turn dark as well.

Typhani lay with her back to him, in his embrace, as they mused over what they might find on the computer's optical drive when they returned home. "You could write a tell-all book!" Typhani joked to her husband, referring back to their conversation in the woods.

"Yes. 101 Ways to Kill a Jedi."

"How do you kill them?"

"You have to have something much bigger and stronger than they are."

"Do you have any ideas?"

"Oh, yes. Some big, nasty aliens, for beginners." He was starting to enjoy sharing with his wife the details of his plans. His enjoyment of this would grow significantly over the years to come.

"Any initial targets?"

He thought for a moment. "There's one they call Obi-Wan. I don't like the way he interacts with the young boys."

"Oh, Adrian, that's _disgusting_!"

"That's why he's first on my list!" 

"So you and the Chancellor are just going to pick them off one by one? That will take years!" Typhani observed, turning to face him.

"Some of them, yes. We want to be careful not to be noticed in the beginning, not until we've undermined their structure enough to knock it completely from beneath them. We'll have to scatter them eventually. In large groups, they can be dangerous. And then, of course, we'll certainly try to splinter them from within. With the transcriptions, we'll learn of points of dissention among them, and drive in wedges accordingly. Ideally, we'd like to recruit a couple of them to our cause, and exterminate them from the inside out!"

"And you're looking forward to all this killing, no?"

"I wouldn't put it quite that way. In this instance, our strategy involves eliminating a small sector of populace to preserve the greater order of the whole. What is about to befall the Jedi will serve as an example to other subversives. They'll think twice before acting out."

"And thus save you the trouble of having to subjugate them as well?"

"Yes. Perhaps so. You make an interesting point, Typhani." One thing Adrian loved about his wife is that he could have such discourse with her, their conversation not limited to who wore what at the last official event.

She proceeded to elaborate. "It's like what we do at the mine. Sometimes the harvesters get lazy. So instead of having to take the time and trouble to reprimand and discipline all of them, we make scathing examples out of a couple of the worst slackers. Basically, Papa gets after them with the lash. The rest fall in line rather quickly, believe me, afraid of what will happen next if they don't."

CORUSCANT 

Palpatine was relieved when the Tarkins once again returned to him on Coruscant, relieved to see the eager intensity back in his protég's bright blue eyes. He would handle his most valuable resources much more carefully from now on. In Tarkin's case, it was back to his original plan, perhaps a regional governorship in his future.

"Wilhuff Adrian! You have been on that computer for hours! Come eat your dinner! The droid will be back for the dishes soon!" his wife called down the hall.

"I'm just getting to the good part!" he called back.

She took up the untouched bowl of pasta and headed down the hall, coming to rest on the edge of the bed next to him. "I'll spoon-feed you if I have to," she insisted, thrusting the bowl at him. "What are you doing, and what's so interesting?"

"Look here," he said, turning the monitor a bit in her direction. "I can use the database program's query function to search for related and repeating threads in all that text on the optical drive. Recurring words and phrases and their frequency and the like. It makes something called a scatterplot. Then I can bring up a report of that, see if there's anything interesting, and then if there is, I can search through the text by keyword and land on each instance of use. I can also query it for specific keywords. It saves having to read several thousand pages." He loved explaining things to her, teaching her, and he was a good teacher. Others would come to know that in the future, some to their benefit, others to their detriment.

"So what's the good part?" she asked. "What did you find that's better than having dinner with me?"

He sat back in his computer chair and looked askance at her. "Have you ever heard of anyone actually growing an organic spaceship as opposed to building one?"

Typhani burst out laughing hard and fell back on the bed. "I do not believe this! They are a pack of _loons_! _All_ of them! Hey, I know, we can have them all committed! Or just convert the Jedi Temple into one giant insane asylum! Whatever are they _smoking_ while they're discussing this?"

At that point, Adrian started to dismiss the preposterous idea as quickly as his wife had, but then hesitated, saved his screen dump, and finished his dinner. It seems this was not the first time he had heard of such . . . nonsense?

When Typhani settled onto the futon to watch holovision again, Adrian took up the comm in the bedroom and called his sister. "Morgana, I'm going to ask you something very foolish," he warned her. "Do you remember that story Mother used to tell us when we were children about the garden of spaceships, where they were grown instead of built?"

Morgana misunderstood. "By the stars! Typhani's pregnant!"

"No she's not, not yet, anyway! I'm serious! Do you remember?"

"Well, yes, of course, how could I not remember that one? It was one of her favorites, always after she'd had a few, as I recall." They then proceeded to recount the details of their mother's story together, as Adrian typed notes.

Marganitha Tarkin had unwittingly betrayed her Langhesi heritage at a time when her two oldest children were very impressionable. Her lapse in judgment would have devastating consequences for the galaxy, both in the near and far-reaching future.

Below in his chambers, Palpatine sensed that his protég's inquisitive drive had returned, and was pleased to know that he was back on task. Although he had begun to turn his attention elsewhere for a suitable Sith apprentice, Palpatine still lamented his lack of success with the Tarkins. Yet one thought of hope remained.

"Perhaps their offspring . . . "


End file.
